


I'll Be There for You

by Thisusernameistakenagain



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 01:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18768556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thisusernameistakenagain/pseuds/Thisusernameistakenagain
Summary: Jessica and Ashley help each other with their trauma after they're rescued from Blackwood Mountain.





	I'll Be There for You

**Author's Note:**

> I love this pairing so much it hurts. They're both just soft baby angles that need a break.

After the rescue from Blackwood Mountain, Jessica spent a long time staring at the plain white hospital wall in front of her. A concussion, some broken ribs, a punctured lung, and several large gashes that would surely scar left her in the hospital way longer than everyone else. Sure, the others had their physical ailments, but Jessica could barely walk when they found her and Matt.

Her parents were there with her, but they gave her the space she needed to contemplate what had happened to her, especially when Ashley was around. The rest of the group came by one by one as they were released to see her and make sure that she was okay. Out of all of them, Ashley was the only one who could get her to stop staring blankly at the wall, the only one who Jessica really wanted to see and the only one who stayed. Well, she wanted to see Matt too so she could thank him for saving her down in the mines, but that probably wasn’t going to happen for some time.

“Hey,” Ashley said, walking into the room for her daily visit.

Jessica would have responded if she could work up the nerve to. She hadn’t said a word to anyone since the interview.

“I brought you a burger from that place you like a lot, where we hung out for the first time. Thought you might like something other than hospital food for a change.”

Ashley placed a brown paper bag on the table in front of her friend who just stared at it. It was a kind offer, the redhead was thoughtful that way, but Jessica didn’t know if she had the energy to even open the bag. Plus, her abdomen felt like it was on fire every time she moved.

“I can help you if you want?”

Jessica nodded and Ashley shifted so that she was sitting closer to the hospital bed. She opened the bag and pulled the large burger out so that she could unwrap it. She also pulled a few napkins, a plastic fork, and a plastic knife from the bag. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to help her friend consume her meal.

“I came prepared,” she said with the best smile she could muster.

The redhead unwrapped the burger and began cut off bite sized pieces so that Jessica could easily eat them. If the circumstances had been any different, Jessica would have laughed at anyone who dare mutilate a burger like that. About halfway through the burger, she decided that she was done. She wasn’t full, just didn’t want to eat anymore, and Ashley picked up on it.

“I know it’s hard, but you should eat if you want to recover.”

Jessica sighed and let Ashley continue to feed her, knowing that she was right.

“It’s hard for me sometimes too.”

Jessica could tell that she wasn’t lying. Even though it’d only been a week since the incident, her friend’s clothes were starting to look baggier.

“Thank you,” Jessica whispered once she’d finished her food. It surprised both her and Ashley, having been silent for so long.

“You’re welcome.”

Ashley got up to throw the bag away, returning to the chair next to the bed and pulling a book from the backpack she brought with her. She knew that Jessica mostly just wanted the company than for her to talk the whole time. Jessica tended to use that time to try and get some sort of rest, knowing that the smaller girl was there if (when) the nightmares came. They had devised a system for when that did happen that involved as little jostling of the injured girl as possible. It was simple really, all Ashley had to do was hold her hand and run her fingers through Jessica’s hair.

“It’s okay,” Ashley would whisper in her ear. “They’re not here, you’re safe. I’m here with you.”

Jessica wondered if Ashley had trouble sleeping too, though the dark circles under her eyes gave the indication that Ashley didn’t sleep much these days. She wished that she could help Ashley the way she was helping her, and it was frustrating that she couldn’t. Then she got an idea.

“Ash,” she managed to get out.

The girl in question looked up from her book. Mild confusion was written on her face.

“Lay with me?”

Ashley looked like a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do, but she couldn’t say no to Jessica’s request. She helped Jessica scoot over in the bed to minimize the amount of pain the blonde would be in and climbed in with her. Soon, the pair were fast asleep, Jessica resting with her hand in Ashley’s. It was the best sleep they had been able to get in a while.

* * *

 

When Jessica was finally released from the hospital three weeks after the incident, Ashley practically moved in with her. They’d become accustomed to sleeping together ever since the day Ashley brought her the burger.

Their relationship before had been a little complicated. They used to be good friends until Jessica and Mike started dating, causing them to hang out less and less. Ashley had been jealous that Mike had asked Jessica out before she even got the chance, but she let it slide. He’d left his relationship with Emily to be with Jessica, ruining Emily and Jessica’s friendship in the process. She figured that the two deserved to have _something_ that made them happy. Jessica really did seem to like Mike.

Ashley wondered why Mike hadn’t been by lately, or why he didn’t stay with Jessica in the hospital. She assumed that something must have happened at the cabin that she didn’t know about yet. She made a note to ask about that later.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Jessica asked as she raided her fridge for some lunch. “I’m thinking of cooking pasta.”

Jessica had gotten much better since they left the hospital, being able to speak more than just a few words and being able to care more for herself than before. Ashley, on the other hand, was about the same as she had been three weeks ago. She had a bad habit of bottling everything up until she couldn’t handle it anymore. They both really needed to see a therapist soon.

“I’m okay for right now,” Ashley replied. “I’m not hungry.”

The blonde grabbed what she wanted from the fridge before putting some water on the stove to boil. She intended to make some for Ashley too, regardless of if she was hungry or not. She wanted to return the favor of taking care of her friend, just like Ashley had when she was in the hospital. Jessica peeked her head into the living room to check on the redhead and found her with her nose in a book. She retreated back into the kitchen to pour the pasta into the now boiling water, a small smile on her face.

Ashley looked up from her book when she heard a bowl being set on the coffee table in front of her. She looked over to Jessica, who had her own bowl in her hands, and decided to ignore it. It was getting to the best part anyway. Soon there was a hand lightly pushing the book down and Jessica appeared on the other end.

“Ash, please?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you eat all day.”

The redhead struggled with herself before deciding that it would be best if she took her own advice that she’d been giving Jessica for weeks.

“Yeah, okay,” Ashley agreed.

She put the slip of paper she’d been using as a bookmark back into the book and swapped the book for the bowl.

“Is everything okay with you and Mike?” Ashley inquired, trying to distract herself while she ate. It was easier that way.

“Not exactly. We got into a bit of an argument before I was dragged out of the window.”

“It’ll be okay, Jess. I’m sure he’ll come see you when he feels up to it. He probably feels bad about not getting to you in time.”

If Ashley was being honest, she didn’t think Mike was really that great at all. He was known as the school’s biggest fuckboy for a reason.

“That’s the thing, I don’t think he will.”

“Oh?”

“We were arguing because he confronted me about you.”

Ashley stopped picking at her food and looked up at the girl across from her. The last thing she had wanted to be was a roadblock in Jessica’s happiness.

“Why would he do that?”

Jessica sighed and put her now empty bowl down on the coffee table.

“Apparently we’re a little too close for his taste, especially since he knows you have a huge crush on me.”

“How-”

“You’re not the most subtle, you know.”

Ashley blushed and sank deeper into the couch, her anxiety starting to build. Now that bowl of pasta _really_ wasn’t appealing anymore.

“I-I’m sorry. I can go.”

Jessica reached over and put her hand on the nervous girl’s knee before she could stand up and head for the door.

“Don’t, I had one on you too.” She stared into Ashley’s beautiful green eyes. “I still do.”

Silence filled the room and Ashley couldn’t tell if it was better or worse for her anxiety to hear that from Jessica.

“That’s why we were arguing. He wanted me to choose either him or you.”

“And?”

“Well, you’re here and he’s not.”

Better, the anxiety was definitely getting better.

“One day when you were passed out in the hospital chair, he came by to talk to me about it. Of course, it was one sided on his part since I couldn’t talk, but he felt that he couldn’t care for me like you could.”

“Really?”

Jessica nodded her head in confirmation.

“From what I’ve seen so far, he was absolutely right.”

Ashley smiled her first real smile in a while.

“You’re so good to me, Ash, and I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” She scooted closer to the redhead and laid her head on her shoulder.

“I don’t think I’ve been all that good to you.”

Jessica looked at Ashley like she’d just kicked a puppy.

“You came to see me every day, even while you were still a hospital patient and weren’t supposed to yet. You sat with me, and bought me food, and fed me, and talked to me, and slept with me, and kept me company. You helped me through nightmares like it was nothing, and you think you haven’t done anything good?”

Ashley hadn’t really considered that being a good person, especially since she partially did it to calm her own fears about what happened on the mountain. Staying with Jessica kept her anxiety in check.

“I mean, I wanted to do all those things for you, but I also did it for me too. I was an anxious mess when I wasn’t with you.”

She thought about all the times she’d come into Jessica’s room just so she could breathe. It was usually late at night, when Jessica was already asleep, so she’d sit there and play with the blonde’s hair until her chest didn’t feel like it was being crushed.

“That doesn’t make it any less good.”

“I guess not.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments, just taking each other in before Jessica caressed Ashley’s face.

“Can I try something?” she asked.

Ashley nodded and Jessica leaned in for a kiss. Their lips met and Ashley felt herself melting into the couch. Her hand moved to Jessica’s lower back, careful not to irritate any of the scars that resided there. For the first time in weeks the quickening of her heartbeat wasn’t from the anxiety.

* * *

 

Two months after the rescue from Blackwood Mountain, Jessica had a huge breakdown. She hadn’t really thought of the scars since she had other things that plagued her thoughts. Then she and Ashley started going to therapy and she suddenly had plenty of energy to worry about them.

Her therapist had brought it up once or twice in the earlier sessions since Jessica had mentioned being insecure before she got dragged out the window. At the time it wasn’t something that bothered her, so she told her therapist that it wasn’t something she thought they needed to talk about. Now it seemed to hit her full force as she looked at herself in the mirror.

Three on her left cheek, two across the bridge of her nose, one on her forehead, one on her chest, the list went on and on. They were red and puffy and _ugly,_ especially the ones on her chest and face. She had also started to gain weight from the medication she was taking for her depression and anxiety. She hated seeing her once toned stomach become soft. Why would Ashley ever want to be with someone as broken and ugly as she was? She stood there for nearly an hour, staring and hating and hurting, before she heard a knock on the door.

“Jess, are you okay in there?” Ashley asked, her voice laced with worry.

When there was no response, she slowly started to open the door, only to find her girlfriend wrapped in a towel and staring silently at the mirror in front of her. She was supposed to be taking a shower so they could go to dinner with the rest of the gang.

“Jess?”

The blonde slowly turned around looking just as broken as she had when they rescued her and Matt from the mines. Her knees started to buckle, and Ashley shot forward to catch her before she fell onto the bathroom floor. She started sobbing as soon as Ashley’s arms were around her.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Ashley whispered into her ear. She moved them so that they were sitting on the side of the tub.

“Why do you stay with me?” Jessica asked, pulling away from the embrace to look at her girlfriend.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so broken and _ugly._ ”

Jessica was even more distressed now, but Ashley looked a bit more confused than she did concerned.

“What makes you think that?”

“Just look at me, Ash.”

That’s just what the redhead did. She scooted back from her girlfriend and just looked at her, analyzing everything she saw. There were scars, sure, but all that she could see was how beautiful her girlfriend was.

“I don’t see the problem,” Ashley admitted.

“The scars… and now the fat.”

Ashley pulled Jessica in for another hug, and the blonde hid her face in her girlfriend’s shoulder.

“You’re so beautiful, Jess,” Ashley comforted. “So caring, sweet, and beautiful. How could I not want to be with you?”

They sat like that, Ashley rubbing Jessica’s back and whispering sweet nothings into her ear, until Jessica stopped crying.

“Will you shower with me?” Jessica asked.

“Of course.”

Ashley got up and pulled back the shower curtain so she could turn the water on. It wasn’t often that they showered together, there was a huge difference in temperature preference and Ashley thought it felt cramped, but there was never a time where they didn’t both enjoy it. Jessica removed the towel, trying her best to avoid looking at her body or in the mirror. Instead, she focused on watching Ashley slowly remove her clothes. She always appreciated her girlfriend’s body, sexually or not.

Jessica stepped into the shower first, closely followed by her girlfriend. They stood together under the stream of water, Ashley hugging Jessica from behind and kissing the scars on the blonde’s back.

“I love you,” Ashley hummed. “A lot.”

“I love you, too,” Jessica muttered.

The blonde turned around so that she was facing her girlfriend. She didn’t know how so much love and adoration could fit in such a small body.

“Turn around,” Ashley instructed as she picked up Jessica’s shampoo bottle.

Jessica complied, turning around so Ashley could wash her hair. Ashley poured some of the shampoo into her hand, setting the bottle down before beginning to apply it to Jessica’s hair. She massaged the shampoo into her scalp with care and tried her best not to pull too hard on the blonde locks. When the shampoo had been rinsed out of Jessica’s hair, Ashley got to work on washing her body with her signature coconut and lavender bodywash. She made sure to trace each scar as she ran her hands over her girlfriend’s body.

It wasn’t long before the soap was washed off and Ashley was kissing all the scars she could reach before turning Jessica around again to kiss the rest. When she was sure she had kissed every single one, she kissed her girlfriend’s stomach.

“I love you and your gorgeous body,” she kissed her stomach again, “and I hope you never forget it.”

* * *

 

Nearly a year after the Blackwood Mountain incident everything had pretty much gone back to normal. They weren’t terrified of their own shadow anymore, nightmares were rare, and they were starting to feel like themselves again.

As the anniversary grew near, Ashley and Jessica became more and more restless. Their therapists said that it was expected for their PTSD to flare up around that time. The week of the anniversary they decided to hunker down in the house together with loads of junk food and watch movies on Netflix. For the most part they actually paid attention to the movie, with a few make out sessions thrown into the mix. One of those make out sessions ended up getting more heated than planned, so the movie was paused, and they moved to the bedroom.

Jessica took control, pushing Ashley up against the bedroom door once it was closed. They kissed fervently with hands roaming over each other. When they pulled away, Jessica scooped her girlfriend up and carried her to the bed. The perks of having a tiny girlfriend.

“I love it when you do that,” the redhead smiled as she was gently placed on the bed.

“I’m glad,” Jessica responded.

They continued kissing until Jessica pinned Ashley’s arms over her head. It wasn’t anything that they hadn’t done before, Jessica was always the more dominant one, but something about it made Ashley nervous. Jessica started to trail kisses down Ashley’s neck as the redhead started to drift.

She was back at the mountain, chained up to the wall with Josh to her left and a huge saw in front of them. All she could feel was fear as Chris stood behind the window deciding on who would survive. The image of the saw blade moving toward them and chopping Josh in half was all too real. _It wasn’t real_ she thought to herself. _Josh didn’t die, it was a prank._

“Jess,” her voice cracked. “Jess!”

The blonde pulled back immediately, scared that she’d done something wrong. Ashley looked like she wasn’t all there. She started thrashing violently to get out of Jessica’s grip. Jessica let go immediately and moved off her lover before she hurt herself or someone else.

“Josh!” Ashley cried. Tears started to stream down her face as she struggled to breathe. She felt so helpless and weak.

Jessica wasn’t exactly sure what to do. This hadn’t happened to either of them before, so she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to touch her girlfriend for fear of scaring her even more or making her uncomfortable.

“Ash, baby,” she coaxed. “You’re here, you’re home with me.”

“No, this isn’t real.”

The blonde was taken aback.

“This can’t be real.”

Ashley stood up from the bed and stumbled her way into the bathroom, leaning heavily on the sink to steady herself. She looked in the mirror and saw the blood on herself, the bruises around her wrist from the restraints. She just wanted to curl up and wait for everything to be over.

“Ashley.”

The redhead turned around when she heard Jessica’s voice. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be dying in the mines. Oh god, what if it had been her calling out down there and not the wendigo.

“Ash, please answer me.”

Jessica looked and sounded just as scared as she felt.

“Jess?”

The blonde let out a sigh of relief and everything started to disappear. There was no dusty old shed, no blood, no saw, _no dead body._ It was just her and Jessica standing in Jessica’s bathroom, perfectly safe. She turned around to look in the mirror again to find that she wasn’t covered in blood anymore, but some dark purple spots on her neck reminded her of what they’d been doing before she had her outburst. She felt humiliated and embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry, Jess,” she apologized.

She threw herself into Jessica’s arms and cried into the taller girl’s chest. It felt like they’d been taken back to that night again, when the terror was still fresh in her mind. Jessica did her best to comfort her girlfriend, rubbing her back and giving her little kisses on her face.

“Don’t be sorry, baby,” Jessica soothed. “You didn’t know that would happen.”

“I ruined the mood, though.”

“Not as much as getting dragged out of a window and dragged down to a mine.”

Ashley appreciated the joke, even though it still made her nervous to think about. Then again, what doesn’t make her nervous anymore?

“Yeah, let’s not do that again.”

“Agreed.”

They moved back to the bed so they could cuddle under the blankets instead of standing in the middle of the bathroom. Ashley rested her head on Jessica’s stomach and enjoyed the feeling of Jessica playing with her hair. It always put her to sleep.

“Man, I’m a mess,” Ashley stated.

“Okay, but think about this: you’re my mess,” Jess said as she bent down to kiss her girlfriend.

“Oh, I know.”

A comfortable silence came over them as they laid there, Ashley beginning to fall asleep. Jessica couldn’t help but smile at how cute her girlfriend was when she was sleepy. She wished that they could just stay like that forever. She wished that they didn’t have to deal with such sad anniversaries and the PTSD that came with them.

On the other hand, she was almost glad that those things had happened. They probably never would have ended up together if she hadn’t had that argument with Mike in the cabin, which wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gone back to the estate. Chris always went on and on about the butterfly effect and how cool it was. Jessica finally understood the hype.


End file.
